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Unprecedented times
Welcome to The Pharmacy's first ever online exhibition. Due to Covid-19, we shut our doors back in March. These unprecedented times did not stop artists making work, so it wasn't going to stop us showing it. This exhibition is an exploration into life during lockdown.
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Exhibiting Artists:
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Calum Eccleston
Lauren Shannon Wilson
Rachel Gibson
Katie Hallam
Mia Eccleston
Claire Ashton
Art Silver
Stephen Benson
Chloe Waning
Jessica Giblin
Lily Castano
Calum Eccleston
The Place Where I am Not
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Dealing with themes of isolation, repetition and distortion, the body, a responsive agent, works to expose the absurdities of its time through a process of depletion. It becomes the foundation for abstraction and metaphor, a mimetic representation of the unease and instability of a life wherein one’s constructed sense of self exhibits an artificial quality.
Lauren Shannon Wilson
Trapped
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Throughout lockdown I've been feeling somewhat trapped, stuck in a constant cycle of wanting to watch and read the news, but also becoming extremely overwhelmed and trying to avoid it but being unable to. I've taken this time to create new work in ways I wouldn't normally and plan what I'd like to create next. Being able to take the time to made new work has helped enormously as I've been able to focus my attention towards something else, even if the work I'm making is related to what is going on in the world at the moment.
Rachel Gibson
FLY
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‘My work involves an intuitive connection with a fragile natural world which exists on the edge, hovering between creation and destruction. Here alien modes of existence reflect our own experiences and create an imaginary echo of the events we endure and the timelines we follow. Curious introspection opens a window into the lives of the microscopic, allowing us space to interpret our own connection with a world where there are glimpses of beauty as well as an overwhelming feeling of misgiving.’
Developed in animation, photography and artists books as well as drawing and painting, each piece of Rachel Gibson’s work carries its own history, expressing a link between thought, experience and memory and all the uncertainties in between.
Katie hallam
Powering The Cloud
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I am currently doing an MA in Contemporary Art Practice in Edinburgh and I am looking at the connections between geology, archaic power and new media technologies. During my lockdown walks I have collected rocks and I had pieces of coal with me in my room - these images are digital collages created from my own photography and glitched imagery.
Mia eccleston
"There isn't much…but…enough for there to be a top and a bottom" (Perec, 1974)
The work proposes two different living environments – one at ground level: the other underground. Built through the concepts of world building and Simon O'Sullivan's Fictioning, these concepts have been the foundation for the work, creating a desire to question what humanity would consider to be important as a means to rebuild the world we are currently living in. After multiple works following the concepts of world building and fictioning, this piece, A place yet to come, focuses on the audience's interaction and reaction towards the chosen important elements, now isolated.
Claire ashton
New Fish
I havent been very well but its apparently not Covid. One of the remedies for what I thought I had is starfish and I subconsciously made this lily starfishlke. Feeling rather like I'd swallowed a shoe over this period perhaps this flower has something of the tentaclular about it ..a starfish with an extra leg.
Stephen Benson
70 Days of Isolation
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When lockdown began, I knew I would need a project to focus on. I was to spend the lockdown period in my hometown of Silloth and I decided that every night I would photograph the setting of the sun over the Criffel, across the Solway.
I used it as a calendar, a moment of zen and a routine led project that would prevent me drifting off into endlessness.
Photographed between March 24th and June 1st 2020, the still photographs show the passing of time in this period. It is accompanied by a piece of music ('Isolation on the Solway Coast' by Goatherder) that I composed and produced during this time.
Chloe Waning
Lockdown has drastically changed our daily lives, making previously very menial tasks much more contrived. Instead of dissecting the politics and larger expanse of our current situation, I chose to focus in on the little, domestic issues we face and created faux, over-exaggerated contraptions to 'fix' them. In these adverts, I dress up as every actor, promoting these items with stereotypically cheesy graphics to parody those taking advantage of this situation for financial gain, filtering this commentary with a comedic absurdity.
Jessica giblin
The Group Dream Begins Now
During lockdown my practice has been exploring 'lockdown dreams'. A phenomena experienced by many, where the stresses and uncertainties of the pandemic have manifested in vivid dreams.
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lily castano
Untitled
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This work is in response to the fragmented pre verbal childhood memories of abuse, trauma, and loss whilst she was with her first family in 1970's comlumbia, South America. This piece is to do with the landscape of the rural Columbia and the assassination of mama. Together these themes of loss, displacement and dislocation of being parted from her first family and country of birth resonated with the current climate of the pandemic, and feelings of uncertainty.
art silver
Six Feet Apart
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It is my reaction to the time of epidemic. It speaks of isolation, questioning what is happening internally, externally and environmentally. Also about the medical and economic changes. The last panel is about handing of the puzzle to other generations . Media is water colors, colored pencil and marker.
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